1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to printing a scheduled print job. The present invention is more particularly related to monitoring and managing outputting of the scheduled print job.
2. Description of the Related Art
In environments such as an office or computer lab, computers may be connected to one or more printing devices shared over a network. To print an electronic document, a computer user typically transmits a request to print the electronic document to one of the shared printing devices. The shared printing device prints the electronic document, in response to the print request, and the computer user retrieves the printed electronic document from the shared printing device.
However, in such environments, it is difficult to maintain confidentiality of the printed electronic document. For example, it is difficult to prevent other users from viewing the printed electronic document between the time the document is printed by the printing device and when the printed electronic document is retrieved by the computer user. Further, there is also the risk that another user may accidentally remove the printed electronic document when picking up their own printed electronic document.
Accordingly, a printing device may be configured to schedule printing of electronic documents. FIG. 1 illustrates an approach for scheduled printing of electronic documents, as disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0227368, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety. As illustrated in FIG. 1, schedule data is generated in step S2. In step S4, a client sends an electronic document to the printing device. The printing device determines whether immediate or scheduled printing is to be used to print the electronic document, in step S6. Immediate printing is used if no schedule data is associated with the received electronic document, or if data indicates that immediate printing is used. In this situation, in step S8, the printing device immediately prints the electronic document. On the other hand, if scheduled printing is to be used, then the printing device stores the electronic document and prints the electronic document based on the schedule data, in step S10.
However, since the electronic document may be scheduled for printing at a later time and/or date, the user may forget to retrieve the printed electronic document at the scheduled time. The delayed printing may also make it difficult to confirm that necessary resources are available at the time of printing or to confirm that the electronic document was printed successfully. Further, the user may need to modify the scheduled printing of the electronic document based on a change of circumstances prior to the scheduled printing time.